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Kyle Evans > Orientation #108

There exists much potential within an organization such as STEIM. The studio is filled with obvious signs of creativity, innovation, and encouragement towards an area of music that is not as fundamentally supported within the United States, where I reside. To have such an institution within such an inspiring city as Amsterdam raises its value to even higher levels. I was fortunate enough to arrive in Amsterdam one week before the start of my residency allowing me to gain understanding of the city and culture in which I would be fully submerged for the entirety of my stay.

The people I have encountered during my stay at STEIM, including STEIM employees, visiting artists and fellow residents, all brought forth individual and influential ideas, methods and past experiences to the forefront of my learning and development during my stay. The unique views and diverse experience of everyone involved creates for a refreshingly eclectic environment where any and all subjects and opinions are presented. With this source of knowledge and inspiration, I found an excellent launch pad from which my technical explorations could begin.

I came to STEIM with with a background in experimental electronic music, art and technology and new media studies acquired through my graduate and undergraduate studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. My primary artistic practice is in the fields electronic music performance, experimental electronic instrument creation and realtime video performance, while my technological approaches vary from micro controllers and computer interfacing, to analog circuitry construction and hardware hacking.

Through the small amount of time I spent at STEIM, I acquired a large amount of both technical and theoretical knowledge that I am excited to further utilize in my future work. I found the software created at STEIM (Lisa X and JunXion) to be very powerful tools for my current interests. I have recently been experimenting in using skin conductivity for computer interfacing and found JunXion to be essential in my prototype development.

Jon He (fellow resident) and I created an impromptu recording of an improvised performance during our experimentation with JunXion and Lisa X. Jon using a gaming joystick, and myself using my touch interface prototype.

My residency at STEIM was as equally productive technically as it was conceptually. My practice has been undoubtably influenced and broadened allowing for it to be newly motivated by previously unexplored potentials. I found my overall learning experience at STEIM to be a combination of reinforced technical and conceptual theories I have already discovered within my own practice, along with a hardy dose of rich and exciting new ideas that will be of tremendous value to the continuation of my practice.